writer, Dr. Vollgraff ; and, though disfigured by endless subdivisions and an obscure arrangement, it is undoubtedly one of the most comprehensive and instructive works that have appeared in our time. All the principal points of Mr. Buckle's theory are here discussed and illustrated with infinitely greater fulness of knowledge than in the work of our English author ; and although the conclusions to which the German philosopher would lead us are not much better, at least there is much more to be learnt on the road.
The third work to which we allude is very different in style and spirit, and bears a motto which at once deprives it of any considerable resemblance to Mr. Buckle's work : Lo bueno, si breve, dos vezes bueno. It is the work of the most eloquent and accomplished philosopher in Germany,[1] and passes in review, in 168 pages, all the great questions which constitute the philosophy of history. The wisest sayings of the ancients, and the latest discoveries of the moderns, are brought together with incomparable taste and learning ; since Schlegel, so brilliant a work had not appeared on the same field.
We have drawn attention to these works because they treat of exactly the same questions as Mr. Buckle's History of Civilisation, and are all written by men of distinguished abilities — the last by one of the greatest modern scholars; because, moreover, they are the only works which, during the last ten years, have really advanced the study of philosophy of history, and are therefore the first books to which anybody would naturally turn who is employed upon the subject. None of them, we may add, are written from a specifically Catholic point of view, yet Mr. Buckle has never once alluded to any of them.
We may attribute this monstrous neglect of what has been done and is doing in the field which he is cultivating, either to simple ignorance of the present state of learning, or to a wary dislike of whatever might not help to support his own views. There is no other alternative, and either supposition is equally fatal to his credit.
- ↑ Ernst von Lasaulx, Neuer Versuch einer alten auf die Wahrheit der Thatsachen gegründetea Philosophie der Geschicate.
